Wanted: noms.

Because I cannot get the unlimited variety of groceries and produce up here, I had to bring a lot of stuff up with me.  Tonight I went Middle-Eastern for dinner, with some homemade hummus, falafel, tabouleh (because I finally found tomatoes and cucumbers at the Northern Store) and couscous.  The only thing I didn't bring up was pita bread, thinking that this would be sold up north... silly me.  So I enjoyed all of this with some toast, and used my imagination.  And cried on the inside.   

I've been getting the worst food cravings since I've been up here.  I am sure I am only craving certain things because they aren't even accessible to me while here.  Like, I got super jealous of a friend of mine who's social workin' it up in Pang, because their Northern Store has a KFC and Pizza Hut... which I would never even think about touching back in Toronto!  The Tujurmivik Hotel here in Igloolik boasts the best pizza in the territory, with people ordering from as far away as Cambridge Bay and Rankin Inlet, but I'm from Chicago.  There are turf wars over the best pizza there.  However, many people have raved to me about their Arctic Char pizza, so I guess I will have to try it.  

Lots of time the chocolate here is pretty stale and almost to it's expiry date, which is a shame.  I bought some really nice chocolate right before leaving Ecuador and wonder how it's doing, sitting all alone on my dresser... along with all the other things sitting on my dresser which I forgot to pack.  

Then I think about all the stuff I can't have right now... Chipotle, Salad King, really good Indian food, Chinese food (wanting to rent a private jet and get Heng Wing from my home suburb of Palatine [yes this was your shoutout] to deliver), and then I think of how my wonderful Greektown neighbourhood back in Toronto smells - because it always smells so delicious in the summer.  This weekend or next should be Taste of the Danforth, and even though I usually avoid it like the plague, I will probably miss my hood being invaded by throngs of people from the GTA to celebrate and pay homage to meat on a stick.  I have nearly made an itinerary of everywhere I am eating and meals I am cooking (my wonderful slow cooker Moroccan chicken made with my homemade preserved lemons which I cannot stop thinking about, for example!) once I return home to southern Canada.  I am getting my hair done the day after I get back and fully plan on going to Chipotle and ordering like 20 burritos with some chips and guac and sit on my couch like Jabba the Hut and will watch an entire season of Big Brother.  And it's gonna be a beautiful thing.   

And hopefully I am still back in time for fresh Ontario produce and will have enough time to preserve and can that stuff for the winter! 

I also really miss good coffee.  And the ability to go and get good coffee before work!  And homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Gah.  I need to stop.  

Anyway.  Polar bears.  Icebergs.  Tundra.  Clear skies and possible northern lights.  And a pretty neat job and opportunity to really make a difference here.  It's been worth sacrificing all that.  

So what's there to do in Igloolik?

"So what's there to do in Igloolik?" you ask.  I begin to laugh maniacally, then realize you expect an answer, and clear my throat.  "Uhm..."  

Here's the thing.  Igloolik is one of the sleepier little hamlets of the north.  It's not like Toronto, where I can just leave my house and meet my friends for wine and pizza in Withrow Park, or go to a free outdoor movie night in East York, or go downtown and walk around Yonge Street and people watch in Yonge and Dundas square.  There are no coffee shops, restaurants, movie theatres, shopping malls.  If I want something, I'm going to the Northern Store.  I usually end up looking at prices and decide I don't want anything anymore.  

 Why yes, that is indeed a $4.00 can of coke.

Many of the local families have cabins "out on the land", which is any land that's not in Igloolik proper.  This weekend, my colleague invited me out to her uncle's cabin for tea and bannock (fry bread, which I thought was only a south Canada First Nations thing, but apparently not!).  There were lots of kids there and I got to see a vastly different part of the island of Igloolik.  It was a super enjoyable experience.  

From the outside it looks small but on the inside it's quite roomy and cozy.  It was so nice to sit and relax and talk and laugh.  The landscape though, was beautiful.  There is such a stark beauty here that I didn't see at first but has grown on me these past two weeks.  

Sea ice, still breaking up.

Everyone will take these big blocks of ice and use them as freshwater in their cabin (that's how our tea was made!).  A lot more pure than the chemicalized, "treated" water we get in Igloolik that has made me sick almost every day I've been here. 

If you're adventurous, like me, you can walk on the sea ice.  Apparently this has been made illegal, as it's dangerous as you can slip off the ice flow and into the ocean.  Even if you can swim, the water is frigid and hypothermia is never far away.  In spring time there's a possibility you can fall through a crack and not be able to get back to the surface.  OK I'm not adventurous.  I'm a wimp.  But I walked on sea ice (which I will call an ice berg) when it was on the land.  I fell into the sand which was pretty much like quicksand.  Does that count as dangerous?  

Uppin' my street cred'.

I also built my first "real" Inukshuk.  I call it real as I made a decently sized one.  The rocks here are super flat, which makes them easy to stack, unlike the Inukshuks I've tried to build everywhere else (Canada was here!) and have fallen the minute I've taken my hands off them. 

You also see these pretty yellow and violet flowers all over the place.  I haven't had a chance to get up close and personal with them yet, but the yellow ones look like poppies.  I forget the name of the violet ones already.

On the land, you also find random monuments to... who knows what.  

Like this random missile.  Hall Beach, just south of here, used to be a former DEW Line, so maybe that's the answer. 

You are a long way from home, my friend.  
 

One of the coolest parts of the afternoon (and it was all great, so this is pretty much ultra amazing) was when my colleague took me to another part of the island to see the skull of a bowhead whale.  And it wasn't just any bowhead whale!  Earlier in the week, I had been gifted a lovely piece of carved baleen (or, the tooth of the whale), which had been carved from this very skull.  

 That stringy stuff you see is what it uses to filter out kelp and plankton from the Arctic waters.

Someone had thrown it out, and the person who found it brought it to me and told me it was mine if I wanted it.  How wonderful is that?  It's also not every day you get to meet the animal who gave you such a gift too.  It was wonderful to do that and to be able to "thank" them for it as well.  

I am about 165cm and I am pretty sure it was taller than two of me stacked on top of each other. 

It was massive.  I am reading that bowhead whales are second largest only to the blue whale, and often grow to weigh about 100 tonnes.  It would have probably taken about 60 men and many many boats to bring it back to shore.  I am learning that the Arctic is all about survival and the Innuit have done a brilliant job of surviving for about 4000 years now.  I don't think I could ever go out on a boat and bring in a mammal that weighs about 100 tonnes.  

It was a really good day. 

Eighty-Thirty to Five

Working in child and adult welfare services is vastly different from mental health. The stress is similar; trying to make do with the resources available (never enough) and to speak up and serve those who may not be able to speak up for themselves. Both fields require tireless advocacy, creative thinking, and and a heart of steel. I'm still working on the "heart of steel" part. 

Igloolik from the gas station.

In mental health, it is largely understood that change won't happen until the individual is ready to make these changes and take these steps towards recovery in their life. This might mean taking medication, withdrawing from medication, seeking counseling, going back to school, using substances in a way that is the least harmful to them: whatever steps they take in order to gain control and have meaning and purpose in their life. Whether it is the complete absence of symptoms of mental illness in their lives, or living a full life while learning to live with ongoing mental health issues, this is all up to the individual. They are in the driver's seat, so to speak. Any supports, myself as a social worker included, are secondary to the individual. You can lead a horse to water...

In child welfare, it's constant investigating. Referrals are endless, mainly due to mandated reporting. Domestic issues? Investigate. Youth arrested? Investigate. Does it involve a child? I'm there, following up, within 24 hours. Majority of our cases will be closed after an investigation, and thankfully, most cases after that will be involved in a voluntary service agreement, where the family is willing to work with us for a minimum of six months. While my first week was slow, this week has been full of investigations. It seems that no sooner I finish one, two more are referred my way. It keeps me busy, and the days go quickly. And I am eternally grateful that majority of cases prove to be nothing; no protection is needed.

What I am not used to, are the severe lack of resources in the North. Twice today, I ran into dead ends when wanting to refer individuals for more services - I simply could not, because those services just did not exist. And this is where it all sounds so trite. Because how do you work on a budget with someone who makes less than $400 a month and there are no subsidies to receive and food is so expensive? How do you work on supports with a young family when they are too young to qualify for income support? How do you sit there and tell someone there is no food bank, after they have told you they haven't eaten in days and they are starving, and then come home and eat lunch? This is where my heart bleeds. 

In my little community back home in suburban Toronto, I could probably talk for thirty minutes about various resources available for the population I serve. Here we have a clothing donation bin but no food bank. There is no access to subsidies for food, which is priced high due to shipping costs. Subsidized housing is non-existent. Generations of families live together, but what happens when you are on social assistance, aren't allowed to live with your family anymore, and can't afford to rent a place, which starts at around $800/month? Many people resort to building shacks on the land; called "love shacks" here. Newer initiatives have been put out by the government to offer more rent-geared-to-income housing, however there is still a greater need than resources available. There is currently no housing for individuals with mental health issues; though a pilot program is being worked on in Iqaluit and they are hoping to implement group homes in each of the hamlets in the long term. There are endless amounts of work to be done in housing and mental health up here.

I don't think it is wrong to want the best for the people I serve. I don't think it's wrong for anyone, in general, to get their needs met and receive the support and assistance they require, when they require it. In my profession, we often hear: "At least something is better than nothing!" and "We are doing the best we can under difficult circumstances". I am sick of both excuses, especially coming out the mouths of social workers. These phrases only seek to breed complacency and maintain the status quo. Social change was never achieved by sitting back and telling ourselves that something is better than nothing. Wanna know why it doesn't change? Because of people no longer challenging and more or less contributing to the status quo, as opposed to trying to break down barriers and decrease systemic oppression.  It is difficult to challenge, though, when you are so weighed down by work and at the end of the day just want to come home and not think about anything.  I myself do not have answers but I can indeed tell you the system in place (all over Canada, not just up here) isn't working.  But what do you do?  How do you change a system that has become so entrenched in our society?      

Elders felt that three Inukshuks we had in Igloolik were inviting violence into the hamlet, as with heads and arms, they are in warrior stance.  To try to quell violence which has been an issue in the hamlet, the heads and arms were removed. 

Igloolik

If you ever wanted to know what two months of my life and $280 worth of food crammed into a trunk, two carryons, and a cooler looked like, please observe the above. 

Getting here was... interesting, to say the least.  I was told I could bring two containers weighing up to 90lbs each by the government... only to get to the airport and be told by an Air Canada ticket agent that was in no way correct, and that my allowance was 70lbs only.  Thankfully, I was only overweight on my trunk, by about 8lbs, which got disbursed between cooler and carryons.  However, having to carry around extra weight is never fun, and unpacking and repacking the items you so meticulously taped up and sealed for extra protection is always a pain in the ass.  But, it was accomplished, and I was off to my gate to wait for my flight to Ottawa. 

I was unable to schedule my own flight due to my being in Ecuador the previous week before taking off to the Arctic, so I was scheduled to travel over a period of two days from Toronto to Ottawa, Ottawa to Iqaluit, where I would overnight, and from Iqaluit to Hall Beach, then finally to Igloolik.  I was sleep deprived and nervous.  I really liked Iqaluit apart from the unhelpful cab drivers and hotel staff, who were content to watch me struggle with having to deadlift two 70lb trunks every five seconds.  I guessed it was every person for themselves up here.  I found Iqaluit to be very pretty, very busy, and experienced the midnight sun for the first time, when I got up at 330am to use the washroom that night and it was still bright as day outside.  I pretty much stood at the window for five minutes, with my jaw dropped.  I also found it to not be cold at all, and was able to run around the city both days in jeans and a tank top. 

I made it to Igloolik the next day, in a ten-seater airplane with propellers which was loud and bumpy and I pretty much felt like we were going to go down into the ocean the entire flight.  Once at the "airport" (which was smaller than my Toronto apartment) I found there were no luggage trolleys and got to haul everything down a set of rickety metal stairs, trying to balance everything and not accidentally step on or be tripped by Inuit children who were playing on them.  It was no fun. 

I was driven to a super nice house on the edge of the village and was informed that I would be living by myself, which was great.  It's a very large and modern house by Nunavut standards, with an ensuite master bedroom, and second bedroom and bathroom as well.  It is warm and that's pretty much all I care about. 

I was also informed that there is a very light caseload at the present time as most people are away for the summer or "out on the land" hunting and fishing.  Majority of my children are medically fragile, and are in foster care in larger cities due to the inadequate medical resources Igloolik has to provide.  There are some custom and private adoption cases as well, but other than that, it has been very slow. 

Graffiti, Igloolik style.

Igloolik has a population of about 1900, and is located in the Foxe Basin in the Baffin region of Nunavut.  On most maps, it looks like it is located on the Melville Peninsula, however it is an island just off this peninsula.  Igloolik translates to "there is a house here" and refers to the sod houses which were originally located on this island (no igloos.  Shocker, I know).  The island was inhabited as late as 4000 years ago, and was visited by Europeans starting around the mid 1800s.  The first permanent fixture of non-Inuit people in this community was built by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 1930s.  Igloolik is considered one of the more traditional communities in Nunavut, with Inuktitut and local dialects largely being spoken here.  The children learn English at school, and the government employs local interpreters to assist social workers, nurses, home care providers, and the RCMP in their daily duties.  It is very cloudy and dusty here.  The sea-ice is still retreating from the ocean, and when it rains gusts of wind starting at around 60-80kph shake my house and it sounds like I am inside of a washing machine.  This is definitely not the 15-20C weather I was informed I would be experiencing.  

But some days, the sun shines, the sky is bright, and I am learning to tell the difference in the sky between "day sun" and "night sun".